Biofortified food crops growing in a municipal garden in Itaguaí. Credit: Courtesy of EMBRAPA

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 17 2013 (IPS)

In less than 10 years, consumers throughout Brazil will have access to eight biofortified “superfoods” being developed by the country’s scientists. A pilot initiative is currently underway in 15 municipalities.

Biofortification uses conventional plant breeding methods to enhance the concentration of micronutrients in food crops through a combination of laboratory and agricultural techniques.

The goal is to combat micronutrient deficiencies, which can cause severe health problems like anaemia, blindness, impaired immune response and development delays. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, micronutrient malnutrition affects two billion people around the world.

These efforts in Brazil began a decade ago, when the government agricultural research agency, EMBRAPA, initiated the BioFORT project as part of an international alliance for the development of crop varieties with higher concentrations of essential micronutrients.

EMBRAPA chose eight foods that are staples of the Brazilian diet: rice, beans, cowpeas (black-eyed peas), cassava, sweet potatoes, corn, squash and wheat.

“We are working on increasing the iron, zinc and provitamin A content. These are the nutrients most lacking not only in Brazil, but in the rest of Latin America and the world as well, the cause of what we call hidden hunger,” food engineer and BioFORT coordinator Marília Nutti told Tierramérica*.

Iron is key. Half of Brazil’s children suffer from some degree of iron deficiency, said Nutti.

The scientists are working on the breeding of plants of the same species, choosing seeds that exhibit the best traits in terms of micronutrient content.

“This is not transgenics. We want a varied diet. Biofortification attacks the root of the problem and is aimed at the poorest sectors of the population. It is scientifically viable and economically viable as well,” she stressed.

The project is supported by HarvestPlus and AgroSalud, research programmes that are operating in Latin America, Africa and Asia with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank and various international development agencies.

How much more nutritious are these new foods? The iron content of the beans, for example, has been raised from 50 to 90 milligrams of iron per kilogram. The cassava, which normally contains almost no beta-carotene, now contains nine micrograms of this Vitamin A source per gram.

The beta-carotene content of sweet potatoes has been boosted from 10 micrograms per gram to a whopping 115 micrograms. And the zinc content of rice has been enhanced from 12 to 18 milligrams per kilo.

In Itaguaí, an industrial municipality 70 kilometres south of Rio de Janeiro, some 8,000 preschool children are already benefiting from these extra nutritious “superfoods”.

With a population of around 110,000, Itaguaí has an annual gross domestic product of 14,000 dollars, with most salaried workers earning two minimum wages, about 600 dollars a month. These conditions made it an ideal location for EMBRAPA to kick off the project, distributing the food grown to the municipality’s public schools, where it is used to prepare school lunches.

For now, the municipality is growing sweet potatoes, squash, beans and cassava on a one-hectare plot that is also used to train the family farmers who supply the schools.

“Itaguaí is a model municipality. This is the third year in a row that we have won the award for the best school lunch management. We have very ambitious plans to quickly reach the entire municipal education system in partnership with all of the family farmers,” said Ivana Neves Couto, the municipal secretary of environment, agriculture and fisheries.

The system encompasses 62 schools and 17,000 students. In 2010, the local authorities incorporated the nutrient-enriched foods in school lunches at 13 preschool centres, with a total enrolment of around 8,000 children.

The goal now is to include all of the municipality’s family farmers in the project, and within two years, to offer biofortified foods in all of its schools, as well as stores and public markets in the city.

One factor that works in favour of the new foods is the natural curiosity of children. “When we tell them that these foods have more vitamins, and they see the deeper colours (of the biofortified crops), they are eager to try them out,” Couto told Tierramérica.

Brazil is the only country working with eight biofortified crops. Bangladesh, Colombia, India, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Peru, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda are all conducting research on one crop each.

The challenge, said Nutti, is for biofortification to be adopted as a matter of national policy for the promotion of food security, following the example of Panama, which has already incorporated it on the government agenda.

The Brazilian initiative is currently in the pilot stage of cultivation, with crops now being grown in 11 states. A total of 15 municipalities are currently using the foods for school snacks and lunches.

Although the project was initiated in Itaguaí, the focus for the future is on states in the Brazilian Northeast, such as Maranhão, Piauí and Sergipe, which are the country’s poorest.

In total, there are now some 67 farming units and 1,860 family farmers directly involved in the production of biofortified crops.

This is a rather small scale for a country with 5,570 municipalities and a population of around 200 million.

A diet lacking in iron and zinc can cause anaemia, reduced work capacity, immune system impairments, development delays, and even death. Anaemia is the leading nutrition-related problem in Brazil.

Some 10 million dollars has been invested in the EMBRAPA project, which currently involves 15 universities, as well as a number of research centres and municipal governments.

In 2014, the agency plans to carry out an assessment of the project’s nutritional impact on the population, by measuring the results achieved with its “superfoods” in comparison with conventional food crops.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

One of the students at the Gymnasia Herzliya School checks on the plastic bottles containing samples of a blue-green algae called Spirulina. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
TEL AVIV, May 12 2013 (IPS)

At the Gymnasia Herzliya School in Tel Aviv, 20 ninth and tenth graders are testing the simplest, cheapest and fastest way to solve the problem of malnutrition among their peers around the world.

Under the guidance of their principal and biology teacher, these Israeli teenagers are attempting to breed a blue-green algae called spirulina, widely believed to contain a miraculous array of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.

Fourteen-year-old Miri Wolozhinski says her involvement in the experiment stems from a desire to help “those in need”, while her classmate, Anouk Savir-Carmon, rails against “the absurdity that in the 21^st century there are still hungry children.”

According to a United Nations report released last October, nearly 870 million people, or one in eight, suffered from chronic undernourishment between 2010 and 2012. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says malnutrition is caused by “inadequate or unbalanced food intake or … poor absorption of food consumed.”

The students here believe they can help rectify this bleak situation. Having studied the various properties of the microscopic algae, Savir-Carmon explains to IPS, “Sixty to 70 percent of its mass is protein; the rest contains carbohydrates, antioxidants, Omega-3 fats, vitamins, minerals – in short, everything needed for nourishment.”

A study published by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in 2008, based on an experiment conducted in Mexico, showed that 10 grammes per day of powdered spirulina supplement were sufficient to combat child malnutrition.

The same study showed that severely malnourished infants admitted to a village health clinic in Togo recovered within weeks of taking 10 to 15-gramme doses of the dietary supplement mixed with millet, water and spices every day.

Known in the scientific community as multicellular photosynthetic Cyanophyceae, the algae is thought to have existed in salt water and some freshwater lakes for over three billion years.

It is considered a “complete protein”, containing all nine essential amino acids that human beings need to survive. Commonly dubbed a superfood, spirulina eclipses all other whole foods such as unpolished grains, beans, fruits and vegetables and non-homogenised dairy products.

Although the algae develops naturally in tropical lakes in Central and Eastern Africa, the derived dietary supplement – sold as flakes, pills or tablets – comes with a hefty price tag and is available only in select natural and health food stores.

Convinced that the prohibitive cost is a result of large-scale and ineffective breeding methods requiring expensive equipment, students at Gymnasia Herzliya are determined to find cheaper ways of growing the cyanobacteria.

They began by diluting a culture sample, obtained from the ‘Adama’ algae farm located in the Negev desert, with chemicals like sodium bicarbonate, potassium nitrate, sodium chloride, phosphate sulphate and magnesium sulphate “for optimal breeding and mandatory alkalinity,” explains a ninth grader named Fea Hadar.

Using the Internet as their guide, students taught themselves everything they could about the algae’s taxonomy, structure, nutritional benefits and growth conditions.

At first, each pupil was assigned the care of one recycled plastic bottle containing a sample of the culture. Since spirulina, like any other plant, needs carbon to photosynthesise, the students would simply “shake the solution every two hours,” recalls Savir-Carmon.

Four months ago, their algae advisor Boris Zlotnikov devised a more efficient system, arranging rows of bottles on a discarded wooden stand and hooking them up to an electric system of pumps, pipes and thin hoses that breathe air into the solution, stirring the algae constantly. “It now grows very fast,” notes tenth grader El’ad Dvash.

Last week, as the solution took on a dense emerald colour, they celebrated their first harvest, drying the biomass outdoors.

“With 650 litres of algae culture, we produced the equivalent of 65 kilos of dry matter,” boasts Dvash.

The class retained some algae in a makeshift reservoir in order to test more archaic breeding methods, without using electricity.

“We’re busy formulating a protocol for ultimate spirulina breeding – in pools, bottles, under various weather and economic conditions, with or without electricity, instruments or resources,” 15-year-old Ori Shemor tells IPS.

“We still have to conduct a series of experiments which will take into consideration light, temperature and humidity variations,” Shemor explains.

Already the project has generated a buzz, with researchers at the Bar-Ilan University’s Algae Biotechnology Centre volunteering to help the budding scientists devise a model to increase the algea’s protein concentration.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has offered to help the students circulate their protocol through its Associated Schools Project, a global network connecting nearly 10,000 education institutions in over 180 countries, while Rotary International has shown a willingness to partially fund the project.

Last month, an Ethiopian education official visited the breeding premises in Tel Aviv. The governments of South Africa and Lesotho have also expressed interest in the project, said Ze’ev Degani, the school’s principal and the brains behind the initiative.

He told IPS the pilot project has the potential to reach between 700 and 1,000 schools around the world. “Half a million children will be growing spirulina in pools and bottles for themselves within two years,” he predicted.

Though the students have registered their experiment under a start-up company entitled Algeed, they are determined to resist the laws of the free market.

Rather than sell the supplement, Savir-Carmon says he and his classmates will “transmit our knowledge to help other pupils around the world grow it for themselves.”

Some have criticised the experiment for having lofty goals, but Degani believes it has a clear rationale – to create a new kind of food chain based on solidarity, until food autonomy prevails and malnutrition becomes extinct.

A student of the renowned educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, Degani is of the firm opinion that teaching and learning must go beyond the walls of a classroom to touch the lives of those who struggle to survive war, poverty, and inequality.

“We’ll make protocols, not money,” he vows.